March 21, 2012

Why was Lady Ashton's Reference to Sderot Removed?

There has been much criticism of Lady Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, for her comments about the massacre of Jewish students and a rabbi in Toulouse, France by a Muslim extremist. In particular many were outraged that in the context of this massacre, she chose to connect it to the predicament of children in Gaza, implicitly condemning Israel.

The Gaza reference generated widespread criticism and a follow-up statement by Lady Ashton. However, her inclusion of children in Gaza obscured the other outrageous component of the controversy over her comments. In her televised remarks, Lady Ashton included the children of the Israeli border town of Sderot as an example of children suffering. Yet in the official released version of her comments the reference to Sderot is removed.

There are two possibilities; one is that Lady Ashton did not include Sderot in her official response and only added it impromptu in front of the camera; the other is that the sympathetic reference to Sderot was intentionally removed from the official public version of her comments.

The first possibility speaks to Lady Ashton's mindset that only remembers the suffering of Israeli children targeted by Hamas rockets as an afterthought. But the second possibility is worse, it suggests a dogmatic insensitivity to Jewish suffering.

Comments

More evidence of the un-informed moving mouths of the well-heeled.
I'll be in Israel next month, stopping in Sderot and surrounding communities to interview and record the sights of this frequently targeted area.
Sderot cannot remain a blind spot in the world's eye. How long would anyone in Canada be tolerant of heavy mortars and rockets falling into their streets from a neighboring country ... what would our response be?

Posted by: Don Sharpe at March 26, 2012 10:00 AM

----> Ashton made her contentious comments at none other than a pro-Palestinian activists' conference in Brussels, the self-styled "Capital of Europe" and also the most Islamic city in Europe. She hosted the event, entitled "Palestine Refugees in the Changing Middle East," in an attempt to convince the world that the European Union is an "honest broker" in the Middle East. Not surprisingly, the Hamas terrorist group applauded Ashton, saying "she deserves thanks, appreciation, and support in the face of Zionist attempts to terrorize and pressure her."
Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2969/europe-islamic-future

Posted by: Don Sharpe at March 26, 2012 10:32 AM

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